The Main Street Historic District developed circa 1844–1920 across just 9 acres and 37 contributing buildings, and the Courthouse Square district circa 1865–1960 over 70 acres — those blocks hold the town's oldest and largest trees on narrow lots with sidewalks on both sides. Danville does actively manage its right-of-way canopy through a standing Tree Advisory Committee, though the specific inventory and replanting-ratio requirements attributed to Chapter 97 could not be verified. That context matters for sugar maple: it is the tree everyone wants and the one that quietly dies in a subdivision — sugar maple is among the least salt- and compaction-tolerant shade trees there is, and it is no longer recommended for street planting anywhere in the midwest. Removing a sugar maple around Danville runs roughly $400–$1,900, and in Danville Main Street Historic District and Danville Courthouse Square Historic District access is usually what decides where in that range you land.
What's actually growing in Danville
The Main Street Historic District developed circa 1844–1920 across just 9 acres and 37 contributing buildings, and the Courthouse Square district circa 1865–1960 over 70 acres — those blocks hold the town's oldest and largest trees on narrow lots with sidewalks on both sides. Danville does actively manage its right-of-way canopy through a standing Tree Advisory Committee, though the specific inventory and replanting-ratio requirements attributed to Chapter 97 could not be verified.
Danville's housing stock, and what it means for tree size
Middle-aged and trending newer: Census ACS figures reproduced in regional planning data show 66.7 percent of Danville's units predate 2000, 24.4 percent were built between 2000 and 2013, and 8.9 percent in 2014 or later, with the town's 2021 comprehensive plan counting over 4,100 housing units and more than 500 added since 2010. The result is a genuinely old core around the courthouse square with 1840s–1920s houses and century-old street trees, ringed by subdivisions whose trees are 10 to 25 years old.
What's specific to sugar maple
It is the tree everyone wants and the one that quietly dies in a subdivision — sugar maple is among the least salt- and compaction-tolerant shade trees there is, and it is no longer recommended for street planting anywhere in the Midwest. A sugar maple fifteen feet off a salted road on stripped subdivision clay is on a decline clock from the day it goes in, which is why so many central Indiana quotes on this species are removals of trees that are only forty years old.
Hendricks County (county seat) County rules
No permit is required to remove a tree on private property in Danville. Beyond that, the town's Chapter 97 tree code could not be verified from a retrievable source: what danvillein.gov does confirm is that a three-member Tree Advisory Committee exists to encourage the planting, care and preservation of trees in the public right-of-way. Chapter 97 is reported to require written permission from that committee and the Staff Project Coordinator before removing, or trimming more than one-fifth of, any right-of-way tree, on a free 30-day permit — confirm that requirement with Town Hall before any work in the tree lawn.